The hallway outside the guild was now pitch black. I pulled a torch out of my inventory and promptly fumbled and dropped it. Eva made an impatient noise as I felt around on the ground, found it, and got it lit.

"There's a pair of mobs in the next corridor over," Eva said. "Let's go." She gripped her kitchen knife a little more tightly, settled her garbage can lid on her left hand, and stalked off.

The next corridor was only about forty meters away. We came around the corner to find two felines batting at each other semi-playfully while hissing semi-not-playfully. One of them was tawny with dark gold stripes and a pair of fangs as long as my palm. The other was red and brown and one of its fangs had broken off short. They were the largest cats I'd ever seen, easily ten kilos each.

Krazy Kitteh - Level 2

Psychotic little buzzsaws with fur and fangs, these guys piss everywhere and have parasites that will do a number on you. In other words, they're just like regular cats except a little bigger and fangier.

As soon as our circle of torchlight touched the cats, they stopped what they were doing and whipped around to stare at us with their yellow-glinting eyes. An instant later they split the dungeon's quiet with yowling shrieks and charged for us.

Eva darted forward to meet them, her kitchen knife jabbing up to score a slash along the tawny Kitteh's shoulder. Her sudden motion took it by surprise and she successfully bodychecked it out of the air, although she hissed in pain as it scored her shoulder with its claws. She stamped down, pinning it in place with her foot and then screaming furiously as she stabbed it over and over.

I didn't handle mine with nearly such aplomb. It leaped for my face, I yelped and stumbled backwards, swinging my chain desperately and missing. The Kitteh slammed into my chest feet-first and stuck there, its front claws anchored in my pectorals. It snapped at my face and I jerked my head back, barely avoiding being bitten.

I batted at it with the folded-up chain but I couldn't bring myself to swing hard enough since I was basically swinging at myself. The chain hit the Kitteh but did nothing, and then I tripped.

I managed to twist in midair so that I was falling face-first. I tried to get my arms up in front of me but I wasn't fast enough. I heard my nose crunch as it hit the ground, but the Kitteh got the worst of it; my full weight came down on it and it crunched, one of its broken bones jabbing me in the boob.

"Ow," I whimpered, rolling onto my back and instinctively cupping my hands over my nose. Touching it wasn't even painful, it was simply a spike of sensation that made the world go white for a moment. There was blood in my mouth and my nose and the jellied remains of the cat were still affixed to my chest. I let go of my face and carefully worked the creature's claws out of my flesh before tossing the corpse aside. It rolled off the edge of the walkway and dropped a meter into the sludgy, algae-scummed water.

New Achievement: Friggin' Finally!

You hurt something! Congratu-fuckin'-lations!

Reward: A Bronze Adventurer Box

New Achievement: Murder, She Did

You have killed a mob that was a higher level than yourself and done it without assistance. Granted, you did it by literally pratfalling on your face, but we'll take it.

Reward: A Bronze Who's-a-Good-Little-Crawler Box

New Achievement: You Made Chaplin Facepalm

You killed something in a dumb and/or embarrassing way that I thought was hilarious.

Reward: Your Who's-a-Good-Little-Crawler Box is upgraded to Silver!

"You okay?" Eva asked, coming over to check on me.

I nodded, which sent a shooting pain through my head, and stood up. "I think I broke my nose."

"Use your Heal spell."

"Oh. Right." I pulled up my hotlist and clicked the spell. There was a sharp crack as my nose set itself. Blood gushed out over my chest as my nasal passages were cleared, and suddenly there was no more pain.

"Oh, yuck," I said, looking at the stain on my front in dismay. "I liked this shirt." At least I had put my mother's hand-made scarf into my inventory along with my other cold-weather gear. It would have made me sad if that had been ruined.

Eva snorted. "I liked this knife." She held up the blade, which was now snapped in half. A thirty-centimeter neatly-curved blade had become a twelve-centimeter jagged gash of steel. It would still kill but it looked a lot more fragile now. "Guess I should have been careful about stabbing something that I was pinning against a stone floor."

I nodded, not knowing what to say.

"These guys weren't too bad," she said. "As long as we don't run into them in large groups I think we'll be fine. Let's keep going."

For the next few hours we walked the halls of the dungeon, meeting more of the Krazy Kittehs and dispatching them. Eva led the charge and scored most of the kills while I was content to watch her back. She made it to level 4 before I reached level 2 but I considered it a win that we were both still alive long after Bannon had thought we would be dead. We were both injured, but judicious use of our Heal spells kept us functional even if uncomfortable. The one piece of good news was that the dungeon apparently bestowed some form of passive healing because I saw my health tick upwards very, very slowly even when I lacked the mana for Heal.

I was exhausted and sweaty and filthy and hungry and thirsty and I would have been thoroughly miserable except Bannon's potion was still keeping my mood regulated. Still, when the saferoom popped up on my minimap I insisted that we stop. Eva didn't protest much since she was almost as tired as I was.

The saferoom turned out to be a restaurant instead of a tutorial guild, so apparently there was more than one kind of saferoom. I wondered what other important details had been left out of Bannon's "only what you need" introduction to the dungeon.

The saferoom had half a dozen booths around the walls and a dozen two-person tables in the middle with the food counter against the wall opposite the door. The tables and chairs were all hard extruded plastic in day-glow orange and deep greens. Where most restaurants would have had a menu over the counter, this place had a trio of screens.

The first said:

Leaderboard will populate upon collapse of the third level.

The central screen said:

Welcome to the saferoom. You are on the First Level.

Rental Rooms currently available: 16

Rental Room price: 0 gold.

Food is available at this location.

I glanced at my minimap and saw that there was a door to my left which led to a short hallway with eight doors coming off each side.

The final screen was the most horrifying:

Countdown until level collapse: 4 days, 19 hours

Countdown until the premiere of Dungeon Crawler World: Earth: 21 hours, 42 minutes

Surviving Crawlers: 4,871,953

I stopped short, staring at the last number. Just a few hours ago, when we were speaking with Bannon, there had been over ten million living crawlers. Now it was down to this?

Activated by my gaze, the counter updated. It jumped down several hundred thousand and then started dropping like a rock, moving so fast that the last three digits were a blur.

I was watching the extinction of my species in real time.

...No. No, there were still humans on the surface. It had been morning in Iceland, meaning it would have been daylight throughout much of Europe and Asia. The bulk of the world's population would have been awake. Most of them were probably inside and therefore dead, but there should have been millions of survivors. Probably tens of millions.

How long would they survive? No structures to shelter in, vehicles to travel in, and no powered equipment to farm or build with. Tools and machines would have mostly been indoors and therefore destroyed. Stored food and water, also mostly gone. It was winter in the northern hemisphere so there wouldn't be a lot of food in the fields or otherwise under open sky. What fraction of people normally worked outside but not in an enclosed vehicle? They would have survived. They would be reduced to a hunter/gatherer lifestyle, but they would have survived. Most of the people in northern winter climates would die within a few hours or days, but those in tropical zones or south of the equator would have time to prepare before things got bad.

On the other hand, nigh-extinction by way of invading aliens was one way to make humanity cut our carbon emissions.

I cringed a little at the callousness of that thought. Hopefully that wasn't me but was instead the dungeon putting words in my head—perhaps Bannon's mind-stabilizing potion. Speaking of which, that was going to wear off any minute. Oh dear.

"Come on," Eva said, breaking me out of my wandering thoughts. "I want some food."

She led us forward until I noticed that the restaurant actually was attended, by one staffer who waited behind the counter. He wasn't much taller than the counter itself, short enough that I had to get close before I could get a good look.

Ho - Bopca Protector. Level 63.

Caretaker of this saferoom.

This is a Non-Combatant NPC.

Bopca Protectors are magical, gnome-like creatures who exist solely to watch over saferooms. They do everything from scrub the toilets to prepare your food. They are surly, smelly, and they never wash their hands.

Ho was a hairy dwarf with slightly distorted features that pushed him through the uncanny valley and into the 'not a human' category. He didn't react as we approached, studying us calmly while not speaking or moving. His mop of hair was colored like moldy dirt and his beard had exploded off his chin to take over as much surrounding space as possible. Through the tangle of hair I could see grey eyes and a huge nose covered in broken red veins. He had a green apron much like the one Lars had worn, and his nametag said 'Ho'.

"Do you have a menu?" Eva asked. Both of us were covered in blood, her more than me, and she was as tired as I was or she wouldn't have allowed this rest break. She was tired enough that she had forgotten to put her broken knife into her inventory; it was still held loosely in one hand, hanging at her side. It was now the length of my index finger, having broken a second time against the trauma plate of a level 5 Kitteh Commando. Fortunately, I had kicked the Commando's grenade into the gutter alongside the corridor or we would have died.

"What do you want?" Ho replied.

Eva started to respond quickly, probably to demand the menu again, and then stopped. "How about a steak, rare, with fried tomatoes?"

Ho nodded without moving anything but his head. His eyes tracked over to me. "You?"

"Lamb stew, please? And a salad with no onions."

"You want stew spicy or savory?"

"Savory, please."

He nodded again. "Be a few minutes. Cups, drinks, plasticware are there." One stubby finger jabbed towards a dispenser against the wall. Without another word he pushed open the door to the kitchen and went through, the door swinging shut behind him.

We collected our drinks—iced black tea for me, Pepsi for Eva—and took a seat in one of the booths. Eva immediately took the opportunity to open her loot boxes, so I followed suit.

Bronze No Lifeguard On Duty Box (1/3)

Healing Potion

Mana Potion

I had gotten that one for holding a Kyoot Kitteh's head underwater until it drowned. The creature had been one member of a trio of meter-tall anthropomorphized feline cheerleaders wearing short skirts and padded bras under varsity sweaters with a big 'K' on them. Their pom-poms had actually been brass knuckles with floofy tin foil hanging off on all sides. The grips were too small for human hands or Eva would have taken them to replace her broken chef's knife.

I was glad to get a reward for it but it hadn't actually been some clever strategem on my part. The thing jumped at my face and knocked me over. I managed to get my hands up in time to keep it from biting my throat out, but it was too strong for me to push away and Eva was busy with the other two. We rolled around until we went off the edge of the walkway and into the slow-flowing water alongside. I happened to land on top and the Kitteh happened to land on the bottom; it was thrashing around trying to escape and I was terrified that if I moved I would lose my balance and my grip on it so I simply stayed still, arms at full extension so that my mouth and nose were barely above the surface. Eventually the Kitteh stopped struggling and went limp, but I held onto it for another thirty seconds to make sure.

Bronze Thief Box (2/3)

Torch x20

Rope, hemp, 10m

Carabiners x5

That one had come from looting an unattended Kitteh encampment. The fact that it was unattended made me nervous but Eva had waved it off. The loot had been pathetic—a bag of cat treats, a fuzzy cat bed, and a stuffed mouse on a string.

Bronze Punter Box (3/3)

Ring of +1 Strength

That was the best loot I'd gotten yet. It had probably been my best kill too—instead of frantically rolling around in the water or tripping over my own feet I had sidestepped the Level 4 Captain Katastrophe's lunge, grabbed him by the cape, swung him around, and kicked him into the wall. Through no skill on my part he hit head-first on a small rocky outcropping and split his head open, dying immediately. I guess the AI was rewarding me for being coordinated.

"Damnit!" Eva cursed as her final loot box faded away.

"Nothing good?"

"No decent weapons," she said, glaring at the inoffensive table. "My knife is wrecked. I thought there'd be something good in the Silver box, but I doubt this is going to help." She held up a kettle bell with '5kg' embossed on the front.

I took the bell from her and hefted it, checking its properties as I did.

Training Bell

Carrying this bell in your hand provides 1 XP every 10 seconds towards training your Strength. May be upgraded at any Physique Training Guild, available starting on the third floor.

"You could probably hit things with it?" I suggested. "Or I could attach it to my chain with one of these carabiners. It would make a good flail, or mace, or whatever it's called."

She took it back and shook her head. "I'll stick with the knife for now, but it'll be better if I carry it. You're supposed to be sticking with a mage build, remember? I'll need the Strength more than you."

"Oh...of course." I bit my lip, wondering if I should say it. "Except...I don't have any spells, and I don't know how I'm supposed to get them. The AI isn't giving them to me in loot boxes, and it's not like I can buy them in the saferooms."

Eva cocked her head. "Buy them in the saferooms...huh." She thought for another moment, then stood up and went back to the counter. Confused, I went with her.

"Excuse me, Ho?" Eva called.

A few seconds later the door to the kitchen opened and the little Bopca stuck his head out. "What?"

"I'm sorry, I know I ordered the steak but...can you make anything from Earth? There's something...no, never mind, it's ridiculous. I'm sorry for bothering you."

Ho came all the way out into the counter area, letting the kitchen door swing shut behind him. He wiped his hands on his apron while staring fixedly at Eva.

"Ho makes good food. Can get any food from Earth. Company wanted crawlers fed well this season so they be good and strong to fight. What did you want?"

Eva bit her lip in most un-Eva-ish uncertainty. "It's a local delicacy where I grew up. It's called spjótamatur...it's for the winter solstice holiday, and I have the best childhood memories of it."

"Ho will make it for you if you tell him what it is," the little gnome said impatiently.

"It's a celebration of the ocean. It's a lobster, two haddock, two halibut, a swordfish, and a narwhal. The fish get breaded and then the lobster and fish together are deep-fried in the whale oil, and then served double-skewered on the narwhal's horn and the swordfish's sword with the lobster in the center and the fish bracketing it."

I stared at her in confusion. What in the heck was she talking about? I'd never heard of spjótamatur and weren't narwhals endangered? Surely no one was hunting them simply to use their horns for a shish kebab skewer. Plus, their 'horns' were actually tusks, so it was weird that Eva wouldn't know that if she'd grown up eating this.

Ho frowned. "Ho has never heard of such a thing."

Eva smiled and shrugged apologetically. "Like I said, it's a local delicacy. Not very common." She shook her head and waved the whole idea away. "Never mind, I'm being ridiculous. I'm sure that's much too much to ask. There's no way you have those ingredients available; I'm sorry for even mentioning it."

"No, Ho does not have those things, but he can get them. You eat steak tonight, then you sleep. Ho will have weird ocean thing for you in morning. You eat for breakfast?"

"Yes! That would be lovely. Thank you so much, Ho, you're wonderful."

Ho looked at me, his head turning so minimally that it was hard to tell through all the hair. "What about you? You want weird thing for breakfast too?"

"No, I—"

"Yes!" Eva said, grabbing my wrist and squeezing tight. "Yes, she does. Come on, Katia—you'll love it. Don't tell me you've never had spjótamatur?"

"No, but I don't like—"

Her thumb ground into my wrist so hard I could feel the bones shifting. "Just. Try. It."

"Right, okay!" I reclaimed my wrist, rubbing it slightly with the other hand, and nodded to Ho. "Yes, I'll have one too."

"Fine. You both sit down. Food is almost ready." He disappeared back into the kitchen.

We resumed our seats; I started to ask what had just happened, but Eva shook her head firmly.

I cast about for another topic. "After we eat, Ho said we should sleep?"

Eva nodded. "There's rooms back there." She jerked her thumb at the door to the sleeping areas. "And yes. We sleep, we eat our breakfast, and then we get back out there."

"Maybe we should go find Bannon again? He obviously didn't tell us everything, because he never mentioned that there were saferooms that weren't tutorial guilds. And he didn't say anything about the bathrooms, either." I had been very glad to find that bathrooms were liberally sprinkled around the halls. They were all identical one-person affairs, but Eva and I each got our own version when we opened the same door. We hadn't both needed to go at the same time so we hadn't tested what happened if someone opened the door while there was already a person in there.

"I'll want to do at least a little more hunting before we talk to him again," Eva said. "There's a few things I want to try out. Besides, we're making good progress against these monsters. They come in small groups and they aren't too tough for us to handle."

I really wanted to argue that the monsters would still be there after we'd gotten a better briefing, but she looked determined so I let it go.

Silence hung in the air again as I looked for something else to fill it, but fortunately Ho brought the food. His hands really were dirty but I forced myself not to think about that as I took my first hesitant bite...and paused.

"Oh my god this is good," I said, digging in. Ho nodded and left.

For the next couple of minutes there was no talking, only eating. My stew had come with a soft bread and warm butter that made a perfect complement and the whole thing was the most delicious food I'd had in months. I wolfed it down and polished the bowl clean with the last of the bread. The salad went into my inventory because the portion size on the stew had been large enough to leave no room for vegetables.

"Oof," Eva said, sitting back with a happily stunned expression. Her plate was just as clean as my bowl. "Okay, definitely time to sleep."